


The Dreams of the Darkness Between the Stars

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: Original Work
Genre: Masturbation, Nonstandard Communication, Other, Xenobiology, wireplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:27:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29101017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: A xenobiologist specializing in celestial whales, and their ship.
Relationships: Sentient Kinky Spaceship/Non-Binary Crew Member
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	The Dreams of the Darkness Between the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).



> This was a new one for me, and I hope you enjoy it! It was a delight to write!

Jamie was woken up by a crackle of static from their radio. 

"Dreamy, did you catch that?" The voice of Curtis, their drinking buddy, and fellow xenobiologist filled the small room. 

Jamie climbed out of bed, took the four steps to the radio, picked it up. Their bunk looked cozy, their blankets bunched up in a cozy nest, their plushies and pillows scattered around. They ran a hand through their hair (probably making it stand on end), and they picked up the radio.

"Gleam, I didn't catch anything," they said, and rubbed their eyes, looking out the big windows of their small ship. The pod of celestial whales were still swimming peacefully through the nebula, and Jamie automatically let her eyes scan over them. There was the matriarch with her new calf, there were the yearlings, there was the other pregnant female, scarred, gravid and huge even by celestial whale standards. The pod was quiet, most of them in that strange, half sleep that Curtis was very excited to study. 

Jamie's ship, The Dreams of the Darkness Between the Stars, turned the dim lights in the cockpit from a pale yellow to a pale purple, and Jamie stroked a finger along the console. The purple lights pulsed gently, like a cat purring, and Jamie smiled. 

"There was a spike in brain wave activity from Big Mama -"

"I wish you didn't call her that," Jamie interrupted, and they flopped onto the seat in front of the controls, their eyes half closed as they watched the clouds of the far off nebula reflect off of the luminous hides of the star whales. 

"She's the biggest, she's a mama, it works," Curtis said, dismissive. "So! There was a spike in the lesser brain wave activity with Big Mama, and she seems to be whistling and projecting, but she's still asleep! The main brain is asleep, I can see that, but -"

"Curtis," Jamie said, interrupting their friend before he could continue on his tear, "I'm not on shift yet. I'm not on shift for another..." They glanced at the little blinking clock, "four hours. Why did you wake me up?"

"Oh," Curtis said. "Well. Since you're studying star whale song, I thought maybe you'd be interested in the dream songs."

Jamie groaned, dragged their hand across their face. "Did you record it?" They asked, their need for more information about the wonderful creatures and their need for more sleep battling neck and neck. The lights in the cockpit were cycling from blue to purple to blue, and it was making their eyes heavy. Dreamy had started to do that whenever Jamie fell asleep, and it was getting downright Pavlovian. 

"Of course I did," said Curtis, and he sounded mildly affronted. "Weren't you the one who said that we've got so much monitoring equipment on our ships that the pod couldn't get a stomach rumble without us noticing?"

"Probably," Jamie said. "It sounds like something I would say. But I am going to _sleep_. Don't wake me up unless it's a real emergency, or if Scar goes into labor." 

"I won't," said Curtis, and he sounded sufficiently cowed. "Sorry, Jamie. I wasn't thinking." 

"I'll talk to you when I'm back on shift," Jamie said, taking some pity, and then they put the radio down. "Dreamy," they said, "can you screen any radio calls, apart from emergencies and the key word "labor" or "birth," please?" 

The Dreams of the Darkness Between the Stars gave a low tone, and the lights went a little brighter for a moment, then even dimmer. 

"Thanks," Jamie said, and they yawned. 

Another tone from the ship, and a gentle rumble that went up their bare feet, rippling along their skin. They smiled, running another affectionate hand across the control panel. Then they crawled back into bed, wrapping themselves in their plush blankets and burrowing into the warmth of it. They weren't sure if the ship had kept it warm, or if they just hadn't been out of bed long enough for the sheets to cool, but they didn't care. 

They fell asleep with the lights still shifting overhead, the ship's vibrations a bit like the heartbeat of a giant. 

-*-

The whales were singing to each other when Jamie woke up. The sounds were outside of human hearing range, but it made the shields around the ship vibrate, just a bit. It had fascinated Jamie the first time they'd felt it, on a school trip touring an asteroid belt. 

Nine years later, and here they were, a tiny human being in a tiny alien ship, part of a slightly less tiny research fleet, following the biggest animals through the empty parts of the galaxy. 

Well. It was odd to think of Dreamy as an alien ship, when the two of them had been together for almost two years now. Although it still sometimes felt demeaning to refer to the beautiful, streamline, intelligent ship with a name like something out of one of those ancient cartoons, _My Little Pony_ , or maybe _Strawberry Shortcake_ or _Care Bears_. 

The problem was that the Shi'iriim had a much more _succinct_ way of summing things up. The Dreams of the Darkness Between the Stars was two whistles and a click when one of them said it. And Dreamy didn't seem to mind the nickname, which was what mattered. Jamie had stuck colorful stickers along the walls, brightly colored cartoon characters frolicking across the blue metal, and the cute little faces always made them smile. 

"What do you have for me this morning, my dear," Jamie said, as they sat up and stretched, back arching and arms over their head. 

Dreamy gave a long, trilling beep, similar to the star whale greeting whistles. That was a new one - when Dreamy and Jamie had first started working together, there had been a whole handbook explaining all the different tones, beeps, and trills, with their meanings printed out neatly beside them. 

There had been those, for a while, but lately Dreamy had been trying _new_ noises, as if trying to communicate with Jamie, which was complicated, and maybe was anthropomorphizing a bit too much, since it had mostly just been the two of them, apart from a few visits to space stations to refuel. 

And here they were, not sick of each other. 

Dreamy was good company. There was enough personality there that Jamie never felt _alone_ , but it was never crowded in the small space.

Thankfully. If there was another person that had any sort of mass in the space (regardless of space), it would have been a bit too close for comfort. Jamie had found it claustrophobic for the first few days, but they'd never felt _alone_.

Jamie ate their breakfast (protein bar, peanut butter flavored) and stood in the sonic cleaner, then put on a clean jumpsuit. They sat at their seat in front of the steering (which doubled as their work station, since the steering could be pushed up and out of the way), and they cracked their knuckles. 

"Okay, Dreamy," they said, "show me what you've got for me today." 

-*-

Dreamy was covered in sensors - all of the ships in the fleet were, although Jamie had rigged theirs up for extra sound sensitivity. They probably _could_ have heard one of the celestial whale's stomach's growling, if they tuned the instruments to that frequency. The whales were being quiet today - the one pregnant female was broody, and the rest of the pod was fussing around her. 

The songs the whales had been singing were quiet things - once Jamie had tuned them to a frequency they could hear, they sat and took notes. There were some familiar tones - _I'm here_ and _family_ and _safe_. They tried not to anthropomorphize too much - it was bad enough to do it with Earth animals, but when dealing with an animal that swam through the vacuum of space and _thrived_ , well...

Still. Jamie couldn't help it. The whales were so much like Earth whales in a lot of ways, despite the tentacles and the excess eyes. They clearly loved each other, or at least acted in ways that could be interpreted as loving by an outside observer. Je'v'l, the Kaardaall said that the psychic communications were similar to those of other types of family cohabitation, which hinted towards actual love.

Although Jamie had always been guilty of ascribing personality to things. 

Jamie was jerked out of their note taking reverie by a series of tones from Dreamy. They blinked, and they stretched, arms over their head. The small ship was filled with the sounds of their back cracking, knuckles popping. "I need to sit up straight," they said, and they tilted their seat back as much as they could, looking up at the ceiling. 

Another tone, and Jamie frowned. "Are you okay?" 

It was the _help me_ tone - usually used for a blocked pipe, or a fraying wire. Once, memorably, because one of the celestial whale parasites had attached to the underside of the ship.

That had been a memorable day. 

But nothing seemed to be wrong, as far as Jamie could tell - they ran scans on the ship, frowning at the readouts in front of them.

There was the tone again - _help me_ , and the lights flashed red. 

"What's wrong?" Jamie stroked a hand along one of the panels, and the ship buzzed under their palm. 

_Help me_ , but there was an odd, upwards feeling to the final note. Jamie tried whistling it back, and Dreamy gave a tone that sounded a little bit like the ones that the celestial whales made in greeting, rendered through the speakers It felt like there was a second message buried in the _help me_ , but Jamie wasn't sure what it was. 

"What kind of help d'you need?" Jamie tried. The whales were quiet, their tentacles gently undulating, reflecting the light of the distant stars.

A trilling tone, rising and falling, and Jamie couldn't recognize that one. It didn't sound like the whales, exactly, and it didn't sound like anything that was mentioned in the manual, either. 

"Show me where you need the help," Jamie said, lacking anything else to do. They glanced at the whales, but the pod was fairly stationary, their great fins spread to absorb starlight. There hadn't been much traveling lately - the last time there'd been a birth due, the whole pod had parked themselves in another asteroid belt. 

Celestial whales didn't have any predators, as far as researchers had found - what could even be _big enough_ to think of predating one? But it was, quite possibly, a constant of any creature that had children to want to have them someplace quiet and safe. 

Jamie wasn't complaining. It was a good time to study all of the mother/child songs - they'd seen videos, but seeing it in person was something entirely different. 

One of the viewing screens switched on to a diagram of the ship, and a little red light flashed at one of the panels. When Jamie glanced over, they saw a light flashing inside as well.

"Right," said Jamie. They went to get their toolkit, digging then sat down and carefully sat down in front of the panel. It was easy enough to open - all of the ships in the fleet had been made so that they could be repaired by their pilots in space, if possible - and then Jamie was looking at the blinking, tangled mess of Dreamy's internal wires and guts. "So what's the problem?"

A rising, fluttering tone, and the various blinking lights went out one by one, until one towards the back was the only illumination in the cabinet-like space. It was an LED cable, glowing faintly, and when Jamie grabbed it and tugged it a little closer, Dreamy made that same trilling, whistling sound from before. 

"Am I hurting you?" Some of the ships had communicated something that sounded like pain, although that was more related to computer viruses than anything physical done to them.

No response.

"Dreamy?" They ran the wire through their fingers, feeling along for any cracks or tears. _I should probably be wearing rubber gloves_ , they thought. 

A trill, so quiet that they almost couldn't feel it. 

"What's wrong?" They let go of the wire, and the ship made an almost... plaintive sound, although now Jamie was _definitely_ reading too into things. 

"Give me a hint, Dreamy," Jamie said, and maybe some of their impatience was sliding through their voice. 

There was a boop, and then the gentle whirr of Dreamy searching the memory banks. Then a snatch of song. 

_Kiss me_ , sang some singer from the twentieth century, _out of the bearded barley._

"Are you having trouble accessing the entertainment cloud?" Jamie frowned. That wasn't an issue they'd heard of, but then again, technology always had new ways of going wrong.

There was a brief flurry of music - snatches of different songs, and then that same line, again and again. 

_Kiss me out of the bearded barley_ , warbled the singer. 

"There isn't any barley here," Jamie said, and their voice was only a little bit shaky. 

_Kiss me_ , the line played again, _kiss me, kiss me, kiss me_ , looping. 

The same line, repeating again and again. 

"Do you want me to kiss you, Dreamy?" _Am I losing my mind?_

_Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me_.

Jamie pressed a dry little kiss to the console in front of them, and Dreamy gave a little shudder, as if the engines sped up for a split second, and then there was a brief few seconds of the gravity turning off. Not long enough for anything to really shift about in the cockpit, apart from a few plushies drifting, but Jamie's stomach did a little flip, and they floated a few inches.

Then the gravity re-instated itself, and Jamie grunted when they hit the ground again. "Is something wrong with your gravity regulators?" That wouldn't be good. They hadn't ever heard of Dreamy's kind of ship having issues with gravity regulation, but... well, you never knew.

The song playing again, on loop. 

_Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me_. 

Jamie pressed another kiss to the console, a little harder this time, and when the gravity stopped, they clung to the open sides with both hands. The engine gave a little sputtering purr, and the lights inside the console seemed to be blinking faster. 

Jamie pressed their forehead against the casing. They were trembling, their mouth very dry and their heart beating very fast. The gravity re-asserted itself, and they landed back on the ground.

More music came on, loud enough that Jamie jumped. It was from that one old musical their parents still put on sometimes, the one with the man in the gold hot pants and the ending with the bad special effects. 

_Touch-a touch-a touch me_ , again and again, on a loop.

Jamie wasn't thinking when they reached into the cabinet and felt along that one wire again - it was the same sort of daze that washed over them when they were having an especially intense kissing session.

Not that they'd had one of those in a long time. Maybe that was part of the problem - being stuck in a ship by themselves, watching the whales fall in love and mate and have families while completely on your own but for a sentient ship could make people... weird. 

But this didn't feel weird. It felt _right_ , right all the way down to their bones. They ran their fingers along the length of blinking cable, and the engine purred, the gravity hiccupping again. Jamie held on to the edge of the cabinet, and they kept petting the cable. The hiccups in gravity kept happening, between one and the next. They ended up crouching, leaning further so that they were almost all the way inside of the console, and this was probably a horrible idea, but the tones and the flashing lights were making arousal pool in Jamie's own belly. 

The tones were rising, and Jamie gave an experimental, gentle tug to the cable. The cable went brighter, and the gravity flat out went out, so that Jamie's legs were floating. it was a little bit like being underwater, although all the air was still working, and Jamie gave it another tug.

Dreamy whistled like one of the whales, and then the rumble of the engines went louder. There was a long, sustained sound that Jamie had never heard before. Then the gravity was completely back, and whatever tension that had been building seemed to have ebbed away, although the lights kept cycling from green to blue to purple, then back to green.

Jamie crawled out of the panel, and they leaned back. They pressed a sweaty palm against the closed console, and they experimentally whistled one of the whale tones at Dreamy - _I'm here_.

Dreamy echoed it back, and then added a little trill to the back - the courting whistle, sung by mated pairs.

That shouldn't have made Jamie's stomach flutter like it was full of butterflies. They whistled that variation to Dreamy, and Dreamy made the lights flash a deep purple, almost a navy blue. 

Jamie whistled back, that same little courting whistle, and they were absurdly grateful for the space between their teeth that let them whistle that much sharper, and the lights flared purple, then went back to their normal gold hue.

“Enough of that, huh?” Jamie stroked a hand across Dreamy’s console, and the console vibrated under their hand. “Good thing I’ve got the radio muted as well,” they added, shooting a guilty look at the slim little box. 

Another tone, and this one sounded almost like laughter. They rolled their eyes, and they went to sit back down in their seat. The arousal pulsing through them was… a lot, but they needed to concentrate on work. There was a whole night’s worth of song to decode, and there had been a few new ones recently, no doubt birth songs or nesting songs or… whatever it was that celestial whales did. 

Jamie stretched again, and they flopped into their seat again, turning the recordings on and waking up their data pad. Maybe they’d have a nice masturbation session when it came time to sleep. It had been a few nights since they’d indulged.

-*-

Jamie had been working for maybe two hours before they realized that their seat was vibrating. All of the ship vibrated - whenever they were back on any kind of solid surface, the lack of vibration put them on edge, now - but the vibrations going through the seat seemed to almost… pulse. 

They looked up from their data pad, and they saw that the lights were going that same deep purple, pulsing in time with the vibrations. Dreamy gave that courting whistle again, and Jamie shuddered, the data pad going back onto the console as they leaned forward, their chest heaving.

“ _Oh_ ,” they said thickly, and their bare feet were planted on the floor now. There was a little indent in the seat of the chair, and if they angled their hips right, they could press the vibrating seat right where they were the most sensitive. 

The courting whistle again, and the sounds from the recordings that they had been studying filled the small space. It was all so much _noise_ , and it was a little bit like being wrapped in a blanket, held close and tightly.

They had never been a fan of crowds - it was one of the reasons they’d been chosen for this research expedition. They still missed people sometimes, though, and being surrounded by the whale song and the sounds of the ship was a bit like what they’d imagined being in a friendly crowd was like, back when they were a kid. Safe. Loved. Held. 

The Dreams of the Darkness Between the Stars held Jamie, safe in the warmth and safety as the two of them floated through the vast emptiness of space together. They were surrounded by other ships, their own little worlds, and Jamie wondered if they were falling in love with their ships as well. Was that a thing that happened, that nobody talked about?

Jame pressed a hand between their legs, grinding through their pants, their toes curling into the floor. They were panting now, chest rising and falling, their heart beating desperately in their ears. They let their eyes open, and they watched the lights. 

Dreamy was making the mating whistle, and then there was that same stomach flipping moment, and the gravity was turned off temporarily. Everything of import was either unbreakable, or bolted down, so Jamie wasn’t worried about that, and then there was the sensation of freefall, even as the vibration in the chair seemed to get stronger.

_Is this the equivalent of someone’s lover seducing them by kissing the back of their neck?_ Jamie moaned, and the sound seemed to weave itself in with the whale song, the ship sounds. They stopped bearing down, unlocked their knees, and then they were floating, completely free of any constraints. _is this what it feels like to be a ship?_ They shoved the hand down their pants now, and they full on humped it, which was… awkward in zero gravity, but it was _good_ , the pleasure mixing with the sensation of floating.

The lights were still shifting between colors - deep blue, deep green, deep purple. “I’ll have to… check that,” Jamie murmured, not really paying attention to what was falling out of their mouth. “What the colors mean.” Their hand moved faster, and the sweet pleasure building at the base of their spine pulled them tighter and tighter. 

When their orgasm washed over them, they cried out. The pleasure seemed to pulse in time with the lights, in time with the fluctuations of gravity. They were wrung out, floating in the middle of their ship a bit like someone floating in a pool. 

“Dreamy,” they said dazedly, and they wriggled upright, to stroke along the console. “Dreamy, _fuck_.” They paused, and then they gave that by now familiar whistle.

The ship whistled back, and outside, the ponderous shapes of the celestial whales echoed the songs between them, beyond the scope of human hearing.


End file.
